


Astable

by Ironlawyer



Category: Marvel 616
Genre: Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Extremis, Hurt Tony, M/M, Transhumanism, holy shit what's happened to Tony?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-27
Updated: 2017-12-27
Packaged: 2019-02-17 03:13:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,134
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13067928
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ironlawyer/pseuds/Ironlawyer
Summary: Extremis was supposed to make him stronger, but after the fight with Mallen, Tony loses control and Steve struggles to handle a Tony who’s falling apart at the seams.





	Astable

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ranoutofrun](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ranoutofrun/gifts).



> In electrical engineering an astable multivibrator is a circuit which is not stable in either state —it continually switches from one state to the other. 
> 
> -
> 
> Thanks to everyone who looked this over for me.

‘We can’t just leave him like this.  We need to get that gauntlet off and check his pulse.’  Tony’s fingers are burning.  Someone’s holding hot coals in his palm and pulling his skin off. ‘I can’t get it off, dammit.  Help me.’  He’s weighed down, like someone’s laid a heavy blanket over him.  He can’t move.  The tinnitus in his ears is like a thousand angry bees have made their hive inside his head.

Something clicks and his hand is free but the air doesn’t cool his burning skin.  He could scream, but his body doesn’t remember how.  Something touches his wrist and he is grabbing, holding, squeezing.  There’s screaming but he can’t tell if it’s his or theirs or everyone’s.  Screaming and buzzing and words and fifteen kinds of music are ringing in his ears.

The noise cuts out.  The fire and the static fade, his eyes flutter open and everything is calm again.  Except the paramedic he’s still holding.  The paramedic who is screaming and writhing, with tears in his eyes and bubbling, blistering skin that sticks to Tony’s fingers like dried Elmer’s glue when he pulls his hand away.

‘Oh my god.  Oh god.  What did you do to him?’  Another paramedic is hovering, horror on his face but he won’t come closer.  Tony stares at his fingers and they aren’t on fire anymore and he asks himself the same question.  Even though he’s lying down, he feels dizzy, like if he relaxed his muscles he could fall through the ground.

He turns his head and Mallen’s body lies next to him.  He remembers holding his gauntlets to Mallen’s head, firing and the sound of Mallen’s blood dripping on the armour like rain on a tin roof.  Then he’d felt his own bones cracking against the suit.  His skin had gone hot but beneath it his blood was like liquid nitrogen flowing through test tube arteries.  If he’d stuck a thermometer in his ear it might’ve come back sub-zero.  He had lay there with Mallen’s body on top of him and realised that he’d fucked up and something was wrong and he was probably going to die.

The paramedic is still screaming and clutching his arm below the burning point.  Cindered flesh is cauterised in places and peeling in bloody chunks at others.  Tony did that.  ‘I didn’t mean…’ He starts to say, but opening his mouth was a bad idea.  He swallows back the urge to puke because he’s done that in the helmet before and it’s never a pleasant experience.  He grabs his gauntlet and gets to his feet and the world swirls into a kaleidoscope of broken noises and colours, and if it wasn’t for the armour he’d fall over again.  He crumples to one knee with a hiss and the uninjured paramedic backs away.  ‘Not.  Going to.  Hurt you,’ Tony says through gritted teeth as a wave of something cold and painful passes through his body.  But he looks at the man still writhing on the ground and doesn’t know if it’s true anymore.

He tries to take flight.  Tries thoughts and words and locks his eyes on the command and tenses his muscles in all the right places but the suit stays still.  A man doesn’t forget how to walk and Iron Man doesn’t forget how to fly, but here he is, grounded, when he should be in the sky.  He takes a shaky breath, clicks out the skates in his boots and jets off down the highway until the paramedic’s screams fade into the distance.

\--

He drifts for some miles but there’s only so far he can run.  It’s not the same without flight and the armour feels strangely heavy and unresponsive.  Off the beaten track he finds an old warehouse, filled with stacked storage containers but no people around and he falls to his knees amongst the crates.  He’s panting and shaking and his connection to the armour is failing, like a battery running out of juice.  The HUD flickers and the panels loosen, the gauntlets fall loose and when he goes to pull the helmet away his hands are glowing red and the metal hisses and crackles as he touches it.  The rest of the armour peels away like wet cardboard and the static gold undersuit ripples across his skin, pulling and pushing like waves on the ocean.  It feels like his skin is trying to tear itself away from his body.  He chokes back a scream.

There is static and noise.  Millions of voices blaring in Chinese, Russian, Arabic, and every language he can’t distinguish because there are too many and it’s too much.  He’s screaming and holding a gauntlet to his head before he can make himself stop but he can’t make it fire.  The gauntlet clatters to the floor with the rest of the armour and he’s panting on his hands and knees.

Pictures and voices and wordless information filling his head and running out of his brain like water from an overflowing glass.  Hot and cold and painful.  His chest is tight with it and he can’t breathe.  The world is shaking and he can’t keep his hands on the ground.  His arms go out and he’s lying naked on the floor, breathing in rust and black dirt, the tang of metal on his tongue that could be the rust or could be his blood crawling out of him.

He closes his eyes.

\--

There’s a starling sitting on his gauntlet two feet away and he can feel its feet tapping as if it was sitting on his hand.  He moves his fingers and the gauntlet clutches the bird’s feet, its wings flutter and it trills and squirms but can’t escape.  When Tony’s fingers unclench so does the gauntlet and the bird flies away.  It lands on a storage crate on the other side of the warehouse and starts to preen.  It should be too far to see it, but Tony can still make out the speckles on its feathers.

He tries to get up but his limbs wobble like a newborn’s and he collapses again, chin catching and scraping on the rough floor; it tingles and goes numb.  A fire lights beneath his chin and runs down through his neck in waves of heat like he’s swallowing battery acid.  He starts to crawl across the floor to the helmet but it moves on its own and comes to him.  The TV’s on full blast and fifty stations and the helmet’s in his hands.  He’s maybe going to scream again, or cry.  He rolls onto his side and presses his cheek to the floor that feels like ice against his sweaty skin.  His fingers are shaking and numb and he can’t keep hold of the helmet so he slips it on.  The HUD flickers like it’s low on power, but that shouldn’t be possible anymore.

He makes the call.  Three rings and Steve picks up.  ‘Tony? What’s going on?  I saw you on the news.’  It’s hard to hear him over all the voices. 

‘Steve,’ he says like it’s the only word he knows how to say.

‘What’s wrong?  Where are you?’ There’s a tracker in the armour that’ll send his location to Steve.  He hopes it still works because the bone in his leg is snapping out of place, like it was before the virus fixed him and he’s screaming in Steve’s ear.  ‘I’m coming, Tony.’  He thinks he hears, but it might be something else, some mix of Spanish and Czech and Swahili and his imagination.  He pulls the helmet off to sever the connection because even though it’s Steve and he wants to hear him and hold him and whisper words he’ll probably regret, he needs one less voice.  Just one less.

The bird is chirping.  Tony’s fingers are snapping in and out of place.  Steve will be here soon.

\--

There’s a light.  Focused and bright and painful, right in his eyes like a penlight that doesn’t move away.  ‘Tony?’  Just one voice. ‘Tony.  Oh god, please wake up.’  He’s rolled over away from the light and he realises his eyes are still closed.  Steve’s fingers are at his neck, ice against his feverish skin.  He will burn him.  He will hurt him.  He will make him scream.

‘Don’t touch me.’  He rolls away from the touch and his fingers come to rest on the chestplate.  He taps on it and it’s like tapping on his stomach.

‘Tony, what’s wrong?’  Steve is holding him, one hand on his shoulder and one hand at his chin.  ‘Your eyes are glowing.’

‘Steve, please.  Don’t touch me.’  Slowly Steve pulls back and Tony rolls to his knees.  His world is silent and calm and he breathes slow and deep as Steve watches and says nothing.  He wiggles his fingers and they feel normal.  There’s dried blood on his skin where the bone was poking out, but the skin is smooth, shiny and baby soft.  The only sound is his own heavy breathing.  He can feel the dirt beneath his fingers and when he clenches them the suit doesn’t move.

‘I think,’ Tony says when his lungs feel full again and he starts to wonder if maybe it’s over.  ‘I think I might’ve fucked up.’

\--

There’s this look Steve has, doe-eyed but angry and even though he says nothing as Tony talks, Tony can read his every thought on his face.  ‘Why didn’t you call?’  he asks.  Tony’s still naked, kneeling at Steve’s feet and if he leans forward he could touch him, rest his hands against the small of Steve’s back and let him ground him to the here, the now, the things he can feel and hear and see.  The paramedic’s screams still echo in his ears and he doesn’t move.

‘I thought I could do this,’ Tony says.  He is not as smart as he thinks he is.  ‘I needed to do this.  I was dying.’  But maybe he would’ve done it even if he wasn’t.

‘We could’ve helped you,’ Steve says.

‘Yeah, I guess you could’ve.’  Before Steve can respond Tony is hit by a wave of something that is not quite pain but an intense sense of something _not right_.  He doubles over and can’t hear or see anything.  His skin prickles like a thousand cockroaches are crawling down his back.  He can sense Steve hovering, he can see him with eyes that aren’t his, black and white and low res and looking across the room from above. 

Steve is not touching him.  His shield arm’s at the ready because he knows the danger now.   ‘Tony.  Tony.  Tony.’  Above the din and below it.  He can hear it, actually hear it.

‘Oh,’ Tony says, because the wave of something awful is gone as quickly as it came and he’s huddled at Steve’s feet.  The dirt has mixed with sweat to paint him like charcoal, but his skin starts sizzling and boiling away his sweat until he’s left with dry flaky dirt peeling away in itchy chunks like old scabs.  ‘I think,’ Tony says, ‘I think I need your help now.’

Steve is there, kneeling by his side and Tony can hear the way his heart is beating, a steady thrum, a little too heavy and a little too fast, it’s like a drum beating next to his ear.  ‘What can I do?’ Steve asks.

‘I can fix this,’ Tony says.  It’s just a malfunction.  A couple lines of computer code that need a patch.  As long as he is still alive, he can fix this.

‘How?’  Steve asks.

‘I need to get to my workshop.’  He staggers to his feet and leans against the closest storage crate.  He can’t feel the armour and it’s like he’s missing a limb.  He can feel the static building in the back of his mind, like there’s a dam in place holding it back, but there’s too much of it and it’s starting to trickle over.  His body is vibrating.  He’ll be on his knees again soon.

‘Christ, Tony.’  Steve is in his space, almost touching, the fading smell of cheap aftershave is heavier on his skin than it should be and it burns Tony’s nostrils.  He looks away but the smell of rusting metal and dust is just as overpowering.  ‘What have you done to yourself?’

‘I had to,’ Tony says.  ‘I needed to be better to beat Mallen.’  It was more than that though.  He needed to be better, to move beyond flesh and bone and the limits of the human mind.  The suit was always just a tourniquet and it was time to treat the wound.

‘There were other ways.  Better ways.’  When Steve says _better_ what he means is _less risky._ Less cost, less benefit.  That kind of thinking would keep him from evolution.  ‘What if…’  Steve’s voice is heavy and his heart is beating faster.  ‘What if you can’t fix this?’

‘I can.’

‘But what if you can’t?’ 

_You might have to kill me,_ he doesn’t say.  _I might kill myself._   ‘I can.  I just need equipment.  Get me to my workshop.’

‘You’re naked.  You can hardly stand.  You won’t let me touch you.  What am I supposed to do?’

He tries to call the undersheath, can feel it crawling under his skin like a thousand ants, but he can’t make it come.  He tries to call the armour, but that won’t come either.  It’s like being blindfolded, he knows his eyes still work, but he can’t see anything.  ‘Get me clothes,’ he says.  ‘And a suitcase.  I can’t leave the armour here.’

‘I won’t leave you here.  It’s not safe.  You’re not safe.’  Of course.  He’s hurt someone already.  He’s dangerous and broken and stupid and he can’t be trusted.

‘Then I’ll call Happy.’

\--

Happy brings a suit because, nine times out of ten, that’s what Tony wants when he asks Happy to bring clothes.  The fabric is coarse against skin that _feels_ too much.  He lays on the back seat as Steve collects the armour, because he knows Steve will get it all and keep it safe, and he trusts Steve’s hands more than he trusts his own.

They drive to Tony’s nearest penthouse in silence and Tony lets the thrum of the engine and the beat of Steve’s heart drown out the voices that want to be heard.  They sit for long minutes parked outside the front door because Tony can’t make his legs work, there are too many parts to his body now.

‘Are you okay?’  Steve asks and Tony wonders how long they’ve been sitting there.

‘I’m fine,’ he says.  They’re the words he’s spent a lifetime saying and never once meant.  This was supposed to fix him.  He wanted to be something more than human.  He’s spent too much time living with the frailty of flesh, knowing what it is to hang on to the brink of life and knowing what it could be to be something better.  His body was always a walking coffin and he thought if the suit could be a part of him it would free him from it, but it’s only burying him quicker. 

‘Right,’ Steve says.  ‘Fine.  Of course you are.’  He gets out of the car and Tony can’t be sure if he slams the door or if that’s just what it sounds like now.

\--

The workshop is alive.  Buzzing and hissing and _breathing_ with everything he’s never seen or heard or smelled before.  He doubles over as they enter and Steve is there at his back.  ‘I just need time,’ Tony says and Steve doesn’t question it.  ‘I just need time.’ And really, he’s telling himself.  Like the first moments in a mosh pit, his every sense is screaming before his body takes it in and tones back the noise to what’s important, and it becomes something transcendent, almost spiritual.  Everything is _alive._

He soaks it in, feels it in his bones and under his skin, warm and right and welcoming.  He is home.

‘Tony?’  Steve’s voice snaps like electricity through the air.  He can feel the wavelengths floating in the air and quivering like music.  Steve’s voice is like music.

‘Oh,’ says Tony.  He takes a step forward and his legs go out.  He can’t feel them, can’t feel his body at all.  It’s like his brain is being pulled in a million different directions until he’s so watered down he can’t focus on anything.

Steve is pulling him to his feet and he thinks he should protest, the indignity of it maybe, or the fire it lights in his belly that spreads through his body in a vibrant hum.  Steve is shaking him.  ‘You’re going to undo this,’ he says.

‘No.’ This could be something.  _He_ could be something.  If he was smarter, if his mind already worked like he imagines it could, maybe this would’ve worked already and he wouldn’t be standing here with the weight of Steve’s scowl laying heavy on his shoulders.  ‘I’m going to _fix_ it.’ 

‘Dammit, Tony.  Stop being an idiot.  You’re falling to pieces.  You never should’ve done this.’  It’s a wonder that Steve doesn’t get it.  There must’ve been a part of him once that had strived to transcend the failings of human physicality.  No one volunteers to down experimental super serum because they’re happy with the way they are.  Steve Rogers didn’t want to be Steve Rogers once, he wanted to be Captain America.  Tony doesn’t want to be Tony if he can just be Iron Man.  Iron Man in his blood and in his bones and letting his body be what it is meant to be.

‘I need to be better.’  Because that’s what it all comes down to.  He’d been working towards this on some level all his life and the suit just isn’t good enough anymore.  Too slow, too weak, too human. 

Steve pushes him away and starts to pace.  ‘Better?’ he asks.  ‘Better?  That’s what this is really about then?  You’re killing yourself so you can, what, fly a little faster, shoot a little further?’

‘Don’t be such a hypocrite, Steve.’

Steve steps closer.  Too close.  He can feel the heat from his skin like he’s stepped inside a sauna, hear his blood flowing through his veins and he wants to do something stupid.  ‘That’s different and you know it,’ Steve says.

‘How?’

‘You’re killing yourself.’

‘It’s not for you to decide what I do with my own damn body.  Why should it even matter to you?’

Steve rubs his brow and Tony can feel the frustration coming off him in waves.  ‘For fuck’s sake, Tony,’ he says like he wants to be anywhere else.  ‘I love you, goddammit.’

The words are too much.

There’s too much weight and too much power and they bulldoze through the dam that’s been precariously holding everything back.  He falls to his knees.  ‘Steve.  Fuck.’  Drops of blood are spotting the floor and it’s his first clue that his nose is bleeding.  ‘I love you too,’ he whispers round the blood in his mouth, because he needs Steve to know that this is good.

Steve is kneeling beside him.  His hands reach for Tony’s shoulders and Tony wants to say, _don’t, I’m going to hurt you_ but he doesn’t have to because Steve is flinching, hissing as they touch.  ‘You’re burning up,’ he says.  ‘You need help.’

‘No. I can do this.’  He wipes the blood away with his shirtsleeve, smearing the white dress shirt with bright red.  It won’t come out, but he rarely wears them twice.  ‘I can do this.’

He staggers to his desk, locking away the pain and the noise and the thoughts of Steve in the place he keeps for these occasions, for the times when he needs to forget himself and forget his failing body and do what needs to be done.  He sits at his desk pressing keys with shaky fingers and hoping his mind is still stable enough to do this.  He lets the rhythm of it flow through him, familiar and easy. 

\--

Hours pass and his concentration comes and goes as his body and mind are seized by malfunctions.  Steve paces and watches and says nothing every time an idea falls flat or a spasm overtakes him.

Eventually, the patch is ready.  He’s run the numbers and simulations countless times and it’s all he can do.  He lays on the bunk in the corner and Steve stands over him.  ‘Are you sure this is going to work?’ Steve asks.

Tony can only shrug.  ‘It’s all I’ve got.’  His every thought and idea are burned to a wick and he is tired and worn down and if this doesn’t work then nothing will.  He doesn’t let Steve say any more, just injects the solution and waits.

\--

When he wakes he feels new.  It’s a dizzying, intoxicating sensation, like his stained body’s been through a spin cycle and it’s come out sparkling clean. 

Steve is sitting by his side, and Tony doesn’t have to say anything before Steve is smiling.  ‘It worked?’

‘I… I think so.’ He flexes his fingers.  He feels better but not different.  There’s a vague noise in the back of his mind but it’s shuttered away.

Steve is close, Tony doesn’t know when he moved but there’s only inches between them now.  He’s looking in Tony’s eyes like they hold answers.  He reaches out and there’s a spark of static as his fingers brush Tony’s chest but nothing outside the realms of normal.  ‘Then,’ Steve says and it’s so low it might’ve been a breath, ‘you’re okay.’

Steve’s hand is snaking up Tony’s shirt and resting on his stomach like he needs to touch skin-to-skin for this to be real.  Tony wants and needs like he has never wanted and needed before.  It’s like he’s sitting beside a heater as someone cracks the thermostat up.  Steve hisses and draws away.  ‘Tony, Christ.’  Steve is staring at his hand, there are red blotchy patches all over where their skin was touching.  Three seconds of contact and Steve has second degree burns.

Tony gets up from the bunk and staggers away.  He can feel the armour, and the undersheath prickles at his skin like goosebumps.  The gauntlets are on his hands before he realises he is calling them.  ‘Shit.  Shit.  Shit,’ he mutters.  Steve’s hand is shaking.  Tony can smell his burning flesh.

He thought he could fix this.  Too stupid and stubborn to see that his mistakes have already killed him.  _We could’ve helped,_ Steve had said.  ‘Tony.’  But that’s all Steve says now and it’s angry and scared and sad and Tony can’t take it.

Maybe he can’t fix this.  Maybe even if he could he wouldn’t deserve it.  ‘I’m sorry,’ he says and cups Steve’s cheek with a hand encased in iron.  He can’t feel Steve’s skin beneath his, he can’t bring Steve’s lips to his and maybe now he never can.  ‘I’m sorry,’ he says again and maybe he’s apologising to Steve, or maybe he’s apologising to himself.  He can hear Steve’s heart beating, he can smell his want and imagine what it would be like.  He can almost taste, almost feel, almost have.  But almost isn’t enough and _almost_ weighs his soul down more than _never_ ever did.

The pressure is building.  The noises and pictures clawing at his ankles, pulling him further from Steve and deeper into the darkness.  He wonders how much a mind can take before it cracks.  It’s been less than a day and he can feel himself fraying.  Every time the crescendo builds and breaks it snaps off a little bit more of his mind and soon there will be nothing left of him.

‘What…’ Steve’s voice shakes, the pain maybe, or maybe something worse than that. ‘What now?’

‘Nothing,’ Tony says.  ‘Nothing now.’  He’s burned out, clinging on to the edge of the abyss with the tips of his fingers.  He has no more ideas.  It’s over.  He’s done.  His hands are shaking inside the gauntlets and he’s about to fall apart again.

He runs to the workshop’s en-suite, turns the lock and falls to his knees.  Steve, he thinks, is saying something from the other side, but it’s drowned out by everything and nothing.  His vision is blurred and his face feels hot.  He wonders if he’s crying and touches his face to feel for tears.  There are none, but still he can’t stop sobbing.

When his world stops shaking and screaming, he lays there on the bathroom floor and ignores the sounds of Steve outside until eventually it takes him again.  It goes like that for a time until he wakes and all is silent on the other side.

**Author's Note:**

> On [Tumblr](http://ironlawyer.tumblr.com/post/169433080907/he-fic-astable)


End file.
